% Why I am a communist
% Leah Rowe
% 2018-09-08

And why communism is the most democratic political system possible, when done
correctly.

I have long been a communist, for as long as I remembered. When I first learned
about it in school, it made perfect logical sense to me.

I was raised in a fairly left-wing family. My dad is a social democrat,
my mother a socialist. Most of my distant family is socialist.

I first read about Karl Marx, Cuba, the USSR and the People's Republic of China
at a very young age. I didn't quite understand it at the time, but the concept
made sense to me: everyone is equal, everyone gets what they need, nothing is
monopolised, the people run their own lives, and work collectively for common
cause.

Although it made sense to me, like so many others I was brainwashed into
thinking that it was impossible, when I read about the collapse of the Soviet
Union; later, I studied the USSR in more depth.

The USSR is one of the greatest examples of why communism Just Works. In 1917,
the Russian Empire was a peasant economy. Its citizens were living in poverty,
most people couldn't read and it has an imperialist monarchy in power.

When Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated, the Great Imperialist War started (what I name it instead of The Great War or World War I). That entire war was
completely pointless; all war is pointless, but this one especially so. It was
fought because of petty, narrow-minded capitalists wanting their own private
corner of the earth, wanting to dominate all other parts. It happened because
capitalism is fundamentally unable or unwilling to act in the interests of
common citizens; it always consolidates power to the very wealthy.

Under capitalism, 10 people run the world. Those people are God, and they don't care if you live or die. They own the banks, the own your schools, your hospital, they own your soul.

You don't know who these people are. You know who their subordinates are.
Their subordinates are your *elected representatives*, but they don't
represent you. They are beholden to the 10 or so masters that rule the world.
E.g. the chief execs of goldman sachs, monsanto, deutschebank, HSBC, the ECB,
the US Federal Reserve and others. And also the various intelligence agencies
(NSA, GCHQ, etc) that spy on the whole world.

Before reading the rest of this article, here's a nice music video to get you
nice and pepped (I'm going to listen to it on repeat a few times before writing
the rest of this article, after this sentence that you are reading in
parenthesis):\
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBCn4Ngi9QM>\
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sBCn4Ngi9QM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Now I'm watching every episode of *Angry Video Game Nerd* while writing the
rest of this article.

So TL;DR The Soviet Union started because the Russian Empire drafted all of its
citizens into that war. The Bolsheviks were popular, had a load of guns and
turned on their government, stormed all the government institutions and took
over. For the next 20 years they built a country that ended up surpassing the
*United States* in living standards: Russia had publicly funded education and
healthcare, free for all, before most other countries on earth. They built
schools, hospitals, roads, homes, introduced a welfare state, introduced unions
and... guess what? It was free for all who needed it. To each according to
their labour... and to each according to their need.\
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7pbnTI1_LM>\
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i7pbnTI1_LM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Come WWII, Russia gets fucked by the nazis. They retreat to Moscow, burning all
their oil fields and destroyed their own infrastructure so as to retard the
nazis progress... then built up their militia, and threw every man, woman and
child into the front. Russia didn't have sophisticated technology (compared to
the Germans) but they had 10 times as many soldiers, all of whom were willing
to give their life to protect their revolution.

And that they did. During the harsh winters, the Soviets turned around and
invaded East Europe, forcing the nazis back to Berlin.

It was later revealed after the collapse of the USSR that Stalin personally had
Hitler's body retreived. Some claimed that he had his skull locked away in his
personal cabinet. (I saw that in a documentary once)

They role into Europe and what do they do? They free all the Jews and everyone
else who were persecuted by the nazis. They repeat what they did in Russia:
they build schools, hospitals, roads, introduce a welfare state and quality of
life all over Eastern Europe improves exponentially. The USSR was established,
and it was the finest example of a free, democratic society that ever existed.

Stalin wasn't exactly nice, but communism *worked*. For the first time ever,
a third of all people in the world had control over their lives. People had
freedom to self-determination for the first time. People who would have previously
been homeless and illiterate were rocket engineers. They beat the Americans into
space. They build railway networks all over Russia and Europe. What they had was
a high-tech society that surpassed the United States.

They had the most highly educated citizens on earth.

This was repeated in China, Cuba, Loas, Vietnam and a whole host of other countries
in the Middle East.

Gender equality was introduced for the first time. Russian women had status and
power in society. They were military generals, scientists, teachers and they were
all educated.

Russia had full employment.

The capitalists were pissed off. They were losing their power. The EU was established
to curb the rise of communism in western europe. NATO was established. And so the
Cold War began.

Communism still thrives to this day. The USSR no longer exists, but could
re-surface. The potential always exists. Communism is the only political system
that rapidly enhances quality of life, erects and protects *social justice*,
focusing on equality.

Most Asian countries have interdependent cultures, and have all the elements in
place to allow a communist revolution. Even Japan.

USA, to a certain extent, has a very interdependent culture. It also has some of
the highest levels of poverty, homelessness, despair and political disenfranchisment
(especially for the youth) in the world; it's the least democratic country on earth,
completely owned by private capital. Everything is privatized.

The 2nd ammendment makes communism very possible in the US of A.

The Russian people didn't have a lot. Because they weren't greedy. They didn't
have 20 different brands of cereal. They made their own videogames (the Dendy,
which was their version of the Nintendo)... they made Tetris for god sake.
But they didn't have frivilous fancy junk. By capitalist standards, they were
poor. But their life expectancy was higher than in the west, homelessness and
unemployment was virtually non-existent, and they had the finest universities
in the world.

What they had, everyone had. It was a collective society, built by the people
for the people.

They beat the United States into space.

And they invented Tetris.\
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O0gAgQQHFcQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VNbo1AGqKrI" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The NES version was even better. If you got the high score, the Kremlin would blast off into space on a rocket based propulsion system.\
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-FAzHyXZPm0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>\
Here is the exact part where the player gets the high score, in this video:\
<https://youtu.be/-FAzHyXZPm0?t=895> 14 minutes and 57 seconds into the video.

Did I mention that the Russians weren't greedy? They gave Tetris to the world. The guy who invented it didn't make a single penny off of it.

Type M-x tetris into *GNU Emacs*. I dare you.
(it's the only useful feature)

I'll just summarize first, and then elaborate on each point:

- I believe that every human being deserves the same basic standard of living
  (access to food, water, electricity, shelter, internet, gas, transportation,
  education, healthcare, civil service, legal representation, and so on) and
  the same level of dignity (no more than 30 hours per week spent on labour.
  Ideally no more than 20, where possible. Everyone should have the maximum
  amount of free time to explore themselves, improve themselves and spend
  time with their friends and families, in order to achieve maximum happiness).
- Even if someone is not a communist, I want to help them. Communism benefits
  everyone. I believe in people. Most of my friends are not communists.
- I do not believe in war. I want peace.
- I want the *United Federation of Planets*. You can only do that with communism.
- ...and now I'm bored. I just felt like writing this on this Saturday.

I really can't be assed to write any more.

I'll just link a bunch of much more well-written articles explaining why
communism is a *Good Thing*

- <https://communist-party.org.uk/>
- <https://communist-party.org.uk/shop/pamphlets.html>
- [Britain's Road to Socialism](https://communist-party.org.uk/images/pdfs/BRS2018.pdf) (from the CPB)
- [Workers of all lands, unite!](https://communist-party.org.uk/images/pdfs/CPB-Racism-2018---o.pdf) (ditto)
- [The EU, Brexit and Class Politics](https://communist-party.org.uk/images/pdfs/CPB-Europe-2018--.pdf) (ditto)
- [China's New Era and What It Means](https://communist-party.org.uk/images/pdfs/Chinas-new-era-and-what-it-means.pdf) (ditto)
- <https://www.cpgb-ml.org/> (rival to the CPB)
- <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4we8iFk-fY&list=PLbQ-gSLYQEc6IWgKJNOMUONgtNXdwVcDC>

Join the CPB or CPGB-ML if you're British. Just pick your poison.

Ireland, Russia and several other countries also have communist parties. Join
them.

If your country doesn't have a communist party, why not make one?
You have nothing to lose but your chains.

...

And now I'm going to answer emails while continuing to watch AVGN.

A well-known communist called Albert Einstein once said *a life not spent for
others is a life not worth living*. I'm paraphrasing, of course.

That guy invented e=mc2
